Sunday, February 27, 2005

Just call a friend, and have 60 bucks ready.

Today I thought I'd try to be helpful for a change. Yes, I know, and shut up. Thank you.

Today's topic is Computer Security. I know that can be complicated, so I'm gonna make it simple.

IF you are a geek/nerd, the skip past this part, unless you want to laugh.

1. Get someone to help you. If you can't, there is (a little) hope.

2. Don't use P2P software. It's the stuff you use to download 'free' stuff of questionable (ha!) legality, and it's fraught with spyware.

3. Install a firewall, the more the merrier. Some are free, some ain't. BlackICE is a nice one, but if you didn't know that already, you can't use it, because it's kinda complicated for people like you. I'm sorry.

4. Use some anti-virus software. Any, really, I don't care what brand. Update it frequently, 'cause a million new virii were created before you finished reading this, in fact, if you haven't got an updated anti-virus program, you've probably got a million virii.

5.Mozilla/Firefox. Internet Explorer is a huge security hole. FireFox (so far) isn't. Unless you like uninvited porn ads popping up for no reason, switch to anything but IE. If you've already used IE for a while, it's probably very annoying, and you are constantly wondering what the %$! is wrong with it. Chances are, you've got a ton of 'spyware' and need Ad-aware, or Spybot S&D. Find them, and follow the directions, and directly you will be directed in the right direction.

6.Don't click on email attachments unless you know the source, and you really, really trust them.

6. Pay attention! Look at me! Are you listening? You aren't, are you? Dang it, why did I bother trying to help you?

7.Nevermind, I'm done here.

Ok, now if you ARE a geek, there might be a few things left to do.

8. Find a friend that isn't a geek, and hold their hand while they follow steps 1-6. Or just do it for them, and save a couple hours.

9.Charge them $60 bucks.

10. There are some tools called LANGuard, TDS-3, Nexus, nmap, and etc. Find them, and use them for good. (Can come in handy for step 8)

11. If you are crazy paranoid/uber geeky/not into gaming, try linux.


If things still aren't as secure as you'd like, try Ford's 10 steps to ultra security:

1. unplug everything.

2. inject penicilin into CPU

3.install Tempest shielding in computer room

4.plug everything back in, but install micro-filters in phone/cable line to filter out bacteria. Shine UV lights on cable to kill virii.

5. use a Disney Little Mermaid brand computer, hackers won't hack them because they look stupid.

6. carry a gun to shoot pop up ads. Install wallpaper that says "NO TRESPASSING. POP-UP ADS/HACKERS/VIRII/TROJANS WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT.

7.Run 121 instances of UT2004, and join online games with each. Alternatively, download every game demo you can find on fileshack/filefront/fileplanet/filepile/filehole/filewhateverthe$#@!youlike at once. Nobody will be able to enjoy hacking a computer that is that bogged down.

8. Name your computer FBI SEX PREDATOR HONEYPOT

9. Ground your modem/cable modem with a yellow wire labeled THIS WAY TO COMPUTER. Most virii are really stupid, and can be downloaded safely into the ground.

10. Create a decoy computer named MOM'S COMPUTER NOBODY CARES ABOUT as a decoy. Infect the daylights out of it. Install every virus you can, and download Kazaa and everything. Make that baby die a slow and painful death. While it does, you can connect with your other computer named SECRET SERVICE IP ADDRESS TRACKING COMPUTER. The decoy will deter hackers, and all of those virii should kill anything trying to get past to your other computer. For bonus points, wire that decoy to a homebuilt Claymore mine/shotgun trap, and laugh as those fools are sent to their maker with a face full of lead shot.

Ok, now you are bored to tears, and no longer have your hot XXX pop-ups to enjoy in front of your 8 yr old kids. Oh well. Poor you.

Thursday, February 24, 2005

A short history of Butt-Jokes.

I'm obviously just entertaining myself with this web blog thingie on the internets, so it really doesn't matter what I type here.

Or here.



Or here.

Or here.


So I'll have to leave you with today's magic word.


BUTT. as in "the butt butt buttt butt made butt butt!"

Why is that funny? I think that it dates back to Adam and Eve. After sinning, and running around naked for a bit, they quickly whipped up some clothes made of vegetables. I guess they were a bit flabby. Anyway, afterwards, God went searching for them, and while He was looking in north part of the Garden, Adam (A guy) said "Hey, I saw your BUTT!" and Eve said "Shut up!" But then she giggled, and Adam let loose with a whole series of butt jokes, and their giggling totally gave their hiding place away.

Later on in the Bible, some joker named Ham saw his dad's butt, and he apparently had a hard time keeping his butt jokes clean, and got in trouble.

The whole Bible is littered with ass jokes all over the place, because asses are funnier than butt, but aimed at a more adult audience.

Later in history, we have tales about Odima and his famous butt joke that started the Peloponnesian Wars, and we learned that we have to be careful with butt jokes. Choose your audience carefully. In this case, my audience is largely myself, and I'm a sucker for ass jokes.

The Great Depression in America started (some people think) due to a severe dearth of butt jokes. Some people claim that the President Frank "the pinko" Roosevelt was responsible for hauling our collective hinders out of the Depression, but it was really Joseph Goldberg, inventor of Butt Joke No#9090,435,094,112,889. Up until that time, people had been focused on jokes about the president, and the economy, and stopped using the time-honoured butt-joke. Joseph Goldberg found a collection of butt-jokes from WWI and carefully plagiarized a few until he grew confident enough to write one of his own. Soon the whole country forgot about their poverty/abuse at the hand of pinko corporate elitists, and started spreading butt-jokes like a thing that spreads quite fast, a zombie infection maybe.

Today, butt jokes are quite common, but they still aren't pulled off with much class, and are usually found in lower reaches of society, and the internets. You shouldn't have to look very hard to find butt jokes. If you need one, stop at your local elementery school, and ask a 3rd grader. Then you should run away really fast, because most people don't want you talking about butts with their third grade child, you jerk.

Keep your butt jokes clean, scrub them with double ply to get rid of the klingons. (haha)

That was practically the only bona fide butt-joke in this whole post.

Join me next time when I discuss Uranus.

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Dear sirs:

Your product ate my cat. I plugged it into the wall socket, (as per the directions,) and it instantly hunted my cat and ate it. I haven't heard or seen my cat since, and I unplugged the unit and dismantled it completely during my search.

I have all of the pieces inside of a metal box right now while I await further instructions. I had placed the dismantled unit inside of a cardboard box earlier, but it ate through the cardboard in a matter of minutes, and attempted to escape my house.

I would like a full refund, and a new cat. Also, I think that this product should not be advertised to juveniles quite so heavily, as I think it may be more dangerous than you realized.

I did attempt to send the product back to the factory via FedDHS, but the delivery man was killed soon after he came into contact with it. I heard some vague snarling/growling noises, and believe that they came from the dismantled product, and not the delivery man. (His name was Chuck, by the way, and his wife is upset.)

Thank you in advance, and remember that my cat was calico, aged 3 years (human) and named "Mitzy". I expect my new cat to be identical. (but not a clone, as my last one deteriorated quite rapidly, and left a puddle on my bedsheets.)

Yours, as long as you comply fully,
Mrs. Diaveroeaux

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Birth of an Evil Genius

As project lead here at the "Brown Betty" rocket research lab, I feel it is my duty to inform the public, and let the world know our precarious situation.

"We started out bravely by stealing equipment from junkyards to keep down the costs, and on occasion, purchasing from online auction sites. We started our research with a simple design in Pete's mom's kitchen. Initial experiements were disappointing, and Pete reached a paltry 2' in the air with 2nd degree burns on his calves. Undaunted, we continued.

We raised an impressive $500 dollars by begging online and by knocking over a neighbor's lemonade stand, and began experiments with a much larger design that we stole from an Iranian gentleman in an alley.

The results were staggering. Most of my research team, (Pete, Pete's brother Chuck, and an anonymous online source known only as "OBL44") were injured and required medical attention. I was encouraged. The sky was the limit if we could raise more money!

I immediately setup a production facility and churned out several hundred units of new rockets using child labour in France, and hired a team of mercenaries to steal a ton of cash from convenience stores in order to raise money for our new venture.

The new project was focused on teleportation, since rocketry was deemed dangerous by the project leads (with one nay vote!) This was a bit trickier, and required large amounts of radioactive things. A brief visit to a local nuclear reactor provided all of the equipment necessary. We got a great deal on the parts, thanks to Pete's dad working there. They were only using the surplus isotopes to cook hotdogs, as they were mostly depleted.

Pete's brother accidentally got his DNA merged with that of a fly, and we had quite a time getting him locked up in a cage in the backyard. Pete's neighbor was brutally mauled and we had to lay low for a while as the police investigated. 48 Hours did a piece on the case, but we dressed up as cheerleaders and fooled them.

Things went terribly awry around the "Teleporting a Fruit Bat Into a Brick" stage, since we mis-calculated the distance to the brick, and teleported a demon from another dimension into Pete's sister's room. I don't know what happened in there, because we ran away in terror, but it can't have been good. I'm pretty sure we left the teleporter on when we ran away, because all sorts of crap as been teleporting in recently and eating the souls of children and ceiling mold.

A number of government agents found out somehow, and have assassinated my hamster "Mr. Wiggles" for no reason. I've come to despise these uneducated morons. How can they hope to understand our work? I've even come to doubt Pete's loyalty as I have seen him crying and blubbering incoherently to a federal agent. Everyone will pay, and I have struck a deal with Chttulfflw the Wise to become more smarter than ever."

Those are the words of "Brown Betty" founder P.J. Larough as written in his journal when he was 13 years of age. He is now quite a lot older, and hiding in his Moon base somewhere underneath the lunar surface. He continues to fund our research, and is quite safe from the random adventurers that attempt to stop both us, and him.

We are carrying on his work, and have developed a teleporter capable of teleporting the entire earth 4cm to the left. I feel that we are very close to success.

Saturday, February 12, 2005

Sooo.... I just watched a short video of an okapi, and wondered, "Ok, the giraffe has 'evolved' a long neck to reach the high up leaves, but the okapi didn't?"

In case you didn't know, an okapi is basically a giraffe with a short neck, and zebra stripes on it's butt. It's a bit of a hybrid maybe.

Anyway, maybe the giraffe has a better reason for having such a long neck, maybe it lived near a lot of movie theaters and couldn't see over that jerk in the front with the big hair. (That means you, Mrs. Winklemeir) Either that, or perhaps it was a spy that had been captured by the lions, and the lions tortured it on a makeshift rack. Either way, the okapi still has a short neck, and is constantly picked on by it's big brother, the giraffe.

"Your neck is soooo short, you can't go on this ride!" taunted Giraffe.

"Moooommm! He's being mean to me again!"

"Shut up! I'm trying to get this souffle to rise! Go tell your father."

Okapi runs away crying and meets a Zebra in an alley.

"Hey, kid, whatcha doin'? This's R turf, yo." the Zebras start to close in, threateningly, and the okapi acts tough to gain their trust. Soon, he joins the Zebra gang. Only one problem, they all have cool tattoos, and the okapi must get one to be a full-fledged member and get discounts at Fleeblers.

The okapi is soon talked into going to a tattoo parlour, run by a frightening punk buffalo, and begins the arduous task of getting tatted. Before the artist finishes, the okapi's parents rush in and stop him. After a loud dispute with a lot of yelling and crying, the okapi runs away, and the parents return to their home. The parents get run over by a train on their way back, and the Giraffe gets a job in Hollywood doing Toys 'R' Us commercials, and gets heavily into drugs. Meanwhile, the okapi hangs out in hippie coffee shops and new age bookstores. It's sad really.

A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste

A Creative Thought was walking down the street, and came upon an Idle Mind as he sat on a fence, shooting tortisses as they flew by. The Creative Thought eluded the Idle Mind for a time, but eventually gave up, and strangled the Idle Mind with a length of Time.

A Clouded Mind was beating a Philosopher black and blue, and soon was stopped by a Lark.
"Say," inquired the Lark, "what gives? Surely that Philosopher has better things to do than get trampled." Soon the Lark did the Philosopher in with a Top Hat and a Bowl of Prawns, and the Clouded Mind dissapated in a fit of Irony.

Thursday, February 10, 2005

DRM is dead.

I finally succeeded in stripping the DRM from my iTunes m4p files! Now I can play them where ever I like. And I likes to play them everywhere. JHymn rocks!

Thhhhpppppt! I'm gonna rot my teeth out on Pepsi products now. I also figured out that Sierra Mist is the easiest (so far) to peek under the cap of, so I've been drinking a lot of that. It would be nice if Pepsi would pay me for saying that, but uh, no such luck.

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Pepsi and iTunes

Ok, so here's the deal. Buy Pepsi products, and there are lots, cleverly disguised, deceitful little buggers, almost never sharing shelf space with the hated and depised Coca Cola jerkfaces, and then (maybe) get a free song download from Apple's iTunes.

Sounds great. The songs usually cost an obscene 99 cents. So do the Pepsi products. So... whatever.

I'll let you in on a little secret. The bottles with the giveaways have yellow caps. You can peek under the cap before you purchase the sweet nectar of life, and make sure that it says "FREE SONG" or "20oz blah blah blah.
You'll still have to pay tax (7 entire pennies here in Prefect Entertainment Land) but you can get a free Pepsi, use that to get a free Pepsi (ad infinitum, or until the manager kicks your miserly little tushie out of the store for being a jackass) and then use the last Pepsi to get a free song.

That's what I did. I got a free drink, and made sure that drink had a free song. That way, the song was REALLY free.

Ok, now you've got the bottle cap with the free song, what are you gonna do? I'll tell you what, you greedy little fart, go download iTunes, (I'm not gonna link to it, because they haven't paid me) and install it. Yeah, I know, I dislike Apple now too, and think that they've lost their minds, but big whoop, we are gonna mess with them a little later.

Right, got that thingie downloaded and installed? Good. Ok, DON'T enter in any credit card stuff, unless you are planning to purchase stuff later. I only plan to get free stuff from them (so far,) so I didn't enter any payment info.

They didn't make it very obvious how you are supposed to enter in your 10 digit code to redeem yer coupon, but I just searched google for the right place, cause I'm lazy and/or stupid. (Hint, try Apples official webpage)

Next, download the song of your choice. None of that hippie crap, either. Get something good.

Ok, now you have a cool song that you can listen to on your computer, or if you are a souless lemming, maybe you can use an iPod. Only one snag. You new song is a .M4p file or something equally stupid. Why, I hear you ask? Because Apple is off their space age plastic rockers.

Yes.

iTunes likes to use .m4p or .m4b or some such nonsense, and they like to encrypt the living daylights out of it, and prevent you from listening to it on anything that isn't Apple approved.

Do you know what that means? I thought so. It means it's time to stick it to Apple, and do some white-hat hacking.

Basically, you're gonna use something called hymn, or one of it's off-shoots, JHymn, or iOpener.
Yes, all of those links go to the same place, just use JHymn or iOpener, for now, unless you enjoy making things harder for yourself, to decrypt the song from iTunes, and then if you want to enjoy listening to that sweet, sweet, New Kidz on the Block song on your computer at work, then you can use dbPowerAmp, or WinAmp, or whatever the heck you want to use to convert that sucker into a crummy mp3 file.

There. If you can do that, let me know, ok? I'm having trouble decrypting MY song, but I haven't given up yet.

If your teeth fall out from drinking all of that Pepsi, then I'll laugh maniacally at your toothless face, and call you names. You should share it instead with your friends if you have any, or maybe your family. If you are really enterprising, sell all of those topless Pepsi products to those suckers you pawn all of your crap off on. Too bad Jones Soda didn't get in on this, then you could drink them all.

EDIT:Just in case you think that was all somehow immoral, (and I almost did) it turns out that Pepsi doesn't care about you peeking under the cap like a freaking 9 year old just to get a 'free' song. I mean, you've heard about "getting something for a song"? Songs aren't worth a whole lot, and most people are too lazy and/or inept to redeem the caps anyway. If you get a million free drinks, that might not exactly make Pepsi your best friend, but a whole dollar should get more than one measly drink, don't you think? Look down the aisle where the 2 LITER bottles are, and check those prices.

Apple doesn't care about it either. They won't jump for joy when you decrypt the thingie, but they got their filthy mammon and increased traffic, and another iTunes user to boot, so it works out.

EDIT #2: Yes, iTunes .m4p is a better/clearer/ format than mp3, using ACC and whatnot. Yes, it's preferable, but not everything plays ACC. Keep a backup m4b stripped of it's encryption so you can play it when you purchase better equipment.

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Some People are Evil, EVIL!

According to forensic scientists, there are some really evil people. Psychiatrists disagree, sort of:

"Most psychiatrists assiduously avoid the word evil, contending that its use would precipitate a dangerous slide from clinical to moral judgment that could put people on death row unnecessarily and obscure the understanding of violent criminals."

This blog is already starting out really fun, ain't it? Wheee! Brutal killings! Yay!

I thought it was funny how people that work closely with evil think it's EVIL, but people that are a step or two away, in the safety of an office, or underneath their beds, are more likely to rationalize it.


So... you laughing yet? No? Ok. Um, the word "BUTT".
HA! I knew it.

Butt, butt, butt, butt. butt, butt, butt, butt, butt. butt, butt, butt, butt, butt. butt, butt

Made you smile.

Next time, I won't be so lenient.

Monday, February 07, 2005

First Post!

This is my new blog. I'm still gonna run Cerebron ix but this is gonna be more fun, and a cover a wider variety of topics.

For beginners, I like big books, and I cannot lie. No, really. It's true.


EDIT: I can't believe I said it would be more fun. That's ridiculous. I meant it would be not limited to the Adventures of Cerebron Ix. It will still be fun though.